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Right there against the drinks table with Kenzie standing two feet away.

He grabs my ass, pulling me in.

Kenzie says, “Okay,” and takes her cup and goes.

And honestly? It works. Everything I was about to say goes straight out of my head. He’s got one hand on my jaw and the other one squeezing my ass. I’ve got both hands in his hoodie, and I’m laughing into his mouth, and I’m not thinking about Rafe Waleska or Koda Barnes for one more second.

We stay another hour. I dance. He watches.

By the time we leave, it’s late, and I’m warm and stupid. I can’t walk a straight line.

Nash lifts me up in one motion and acts like I weigh nothing. I hang onto him with a big smile on my face. For about two blocks, I have the best view in the world. I rub his cheek, and then I kiss him.

“We’re almost home,” he says.

I do it again, under his jaw, where he’s warm.

Home.

I pull his lip into my mouth and suck.

“Kylie. I’m walking.”

“You’re doing so well,” I whisper and kiss him again. Then I lick his neck.

“I’m going to drop you.”

“You would never.”

He doesn’t drop me. He carries me the entire way across campus, past the library and the dead skeleton on the door and the bike racks, and I kiss his ear and his cheek and the corner of his mouth whenever he turns his head to tell me to stop, and somewhere around the quad, he gives up telling me to stop.

He’s laughing by the time we get to Corvin. Not loudly. But he is, because now I’m licking and biting his face. I could seriously eat this man.

He carries me up three flights of stairs, which is when I decide he’s showing off, and down the hall past my own door to his. He has to put me down to get his key out, and I kiss him against the door while he’s doing it.

The door opens. He walks me in backward with his hands on my face.

And then the cold hits the back of my legs.

I break off. I look past his shoulder. Rafe isn’t here, but the window is open.

“Absolutely fucking not,” I say.

“Baby—”

I’m already going. I get two steps.

He catches me around the waist from behind, my feet come off the floor again, and I am laughing so hard I can’t breathe, kicking, entirely off the ground.

“It’s October,” I shout.

“I know what month it is,” Nash says into my hair.

He kicks the door shut behind us and drops me on the bed.

Epilogue

Tessa